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Get Politics Out of Japan's Food Fight

The grim reaper will take care of Japan's farmers without help from the government, so the joke goes. But Tokyo's certainly doing its best to aid in the decline of its agriculture sector.

Japan has the lowest self-sufficiency ratio in the industrialized world. For example, only 40% of calories consumed in Japan are domestically produced, down from 50% in 1988, versus 65% in the U.K. or Switzerland's 52%, the government says. Agricultural output and the amount of land farmed continues to shrink, too.